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It’s February – Tax Season and Financial Review – Grr!

February 5, 2015 by LK Leave a Comment

While I’m still waiting on a couple 1099’s, for the most part I do my banking/tax prep the lazy way. Everything runs through my card, and it’s all in the same account (personal and business) right now. I used to have it separated, which was really smart of me. Now, I’m lazy and just prefer to categorize everything when it comes in on my statements, so I can see an overall look at my spending versus my income.

2014 Tax Preparation and Financial

This mama is so disappointed in herself.

Just a little breakdown, here… Some of my category expenses (not all) in percentages, based on my overall income.

Dining out: 11.05%

Groceries: 19.31%

Daycare: 16.93%

Miscellaneous (or not categorized): 11.11%

Automotive (insurance, parts, supplies, car washes): 8.1%

There’s more, but I can’t bear to admit it. Over 30% on eating makes me sick enough. I was originally going to link to the spending calculator over at Mother Jones, but Iowa State has this nifty food spending calculator you can check yourself on, which also links out to the USDA’s suggestions for food spending based on your household. We wouldn’t be able to pay our grocery bill on food stamps, much less the amount we spend on eating out. We definitely, absolutely, positively need to cut back.

So disgusted with myself for slacking for so long. I need to jump in and get those percentages DOWN! In all fairness, I do have about 9% of my 2014 income in savings right now… which is really a shock for me, to be honest. I’m pretty proud of that one, because at one point in my life, I had nearly 50% of my current annual income in savings, and that was used up in a year’s time. It took me almost 5 years to get back to having anything in there at all, and to say now that I’m at 9%, when it only took me less than 6 months to get there? Yep, that’s pretty good, I think.

But now it’s time to set some goals on the spending front. (And the earning one, too!) By January of next year, I would like to see at least 30% of my annual income in my savings accounts, and I’d like to see those spending percentages drop a bit. I know that there are certain things to take into account here, though…

If I increase my income by 20%, but we don’t decrease spending in terms of amount, then the percentages drop. In one respect, it balances out because the idea is to increase income AND reduce spending. So I’ll be comparing numbers to numbers for the spending reduction part of my goals as well.

How about you? Do you do a financial analysis like this each year? I need to see things like this sometimes to give me a huge boot in the butt. What works for you?

 

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Filed Under: Budgeting & Finance Tagged With: analysis, budgeting, increase income, reduce spending, saving money, simplifying

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Not Your Average Money Blog…

Hey, I'm Lara. I'm a work-at-home-mom of one in a single income family of three. We are full of love, fun, and sometimes even adventure!

CCC is intended to help you discover new ways to fix your relationship with money. It's not about being cheap or overly frugal. It's not about getting a ton of stuff for free. It's about being creative and learning how to let go of financial stress while still enjoying life.

There's NO reason you have to 'feel poor' or struggle with your balance every month. You can care for your family and home on a single income. And it doesn't mean wasting time clipping coupons. (It doesn't pay me enough for my time, to be honest.)

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